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Dear Me: A Letter to Myself on My 35th Birthday

You know, there is something surreal about turning another year older as the clock strikes midnight and the calendar starts over again. As if one is given a fresh new start, every single year. And every year, you swear it will be better than the year before. In the veritable shit storms you have endured, you have said that it has to get better. And for the most part, it has. 2011 brought stagnation, sort of. No big career moves. No earth-shattering events. No big changes. Just life. Work and school, kids getting older, John by your side. Though 2011 brought the great Asperger drama with Evan. Still, nothing earth-shattering.

How fucking boring.

You are getting older. 35. It is time to shake things up.

What do we hope 2012 will bring? Finishing the undergrad degree, already. Grad school. That damned GMAT. Failure is not an option for any of those if you ever want to get the things out of your life that you have hoped for all of this time.

You need that Audi you have wanted. You need a damned MBA and an MBA salary to get that, you crazy bitch. So do it.

And you know those bad habits you have? Yeah, those. Well, what once was cute and quirky in a 25-year-old is no longer cute with the addition of a decade. And the problem with your bad habits is that they will eventually kill you. Your habits are a reflection of irresponsibility now that you are older. It is time to fix them so you can be here when the kids grow up. You bitch and whine that you never get time off, but there you have it. When they are grown, you will have time. If you survive. Fix that shit right now.

This year you will work harder. You will be better. At parenting the boys. At being a wife to John. As a therapist. You will because you need to be. You know how we get when we get bored, and in order to prevent boredom, you need to find some sort of a challenge. These are your challenges. While you need to prepare for the future, you need to bank some of your time and energy on the present. Before the present is the past and it is too late to do anything about it.

You will write better. You will read more. You will get fresh air. Maybe your stressed ass needs to take up yoga again before you kill the planet.

And speaking of the planet, maybe you could recycle a little. Isn’t that your duty as a citizen? Why don’t you? It’s a small step, but a step nonetheless. No more excuses.

Learn to crochet or something. Maybe you can make tacky doilies for everybody or something. No, really. Everyone can do it. You are a smart bitch. There is no way you are incapable. Just teach yourself. And then don’t get all extra Andrea-OCD on the shit and refuse to stop until a project is finished. It really is okay to put something down and come back to it later. This will teach you patience and give you something to do that will distract you from breaking those bad habits.

The treadmill is not a clothes rack. Take it out. Use the damned thing. All of that studying you do? Well the beauty of the treadmill is that those enormous textbooks perch quite nicely on that rail right in front of your face. Quit being lazy.

Some people are pretty. Some are thin. Some come from money. Everyone has some sort of advantage in this life. And life is a game of learning to exploit your advantages to get what you want out of life. Your advantage, other than big boobs, is that you have a brain. You can figure shit out. And that is what you need to do. You have survived some hell that we cannot even speak of right now. You can overcome these shortcomings.

And you will. Because you are now 35-fucking-years-old. And it is time to quit playing and get real.

Peace Out, Yo.

Andrea

And to the rest of you, sitting in your homes, reading this crazy shit that is sure to get me committed: